No Democracy Please, We Are Egyptian!

As the Cairo Times, an English language weekly, aimed at progressive
elements in Egyptian society, said, "No one imagined that at the
moment of the Egyptian President’s visit to Washington , his Minister of
Education, Hussein Kamal Bahaeddin, would seize the occasion to muzzle
civil society."

The minister in question published a directive punishing 36 teachers
and one principal for having taken part in a seminar on "Initiation
to Democracy in the Education System." It is undoubtedly true
that one reason for the success of Muslim fundamentalists is that not one
Islamic country has developed civil society, with democratic institutions
that answer to the needs of the citizen.

As Edward Said put it,

"The history of the modern Arab world – with all its political
failures, its human rights abuses, its stunning military incompetence,
its decreasing production, the fact that alone of all modern peoples we
[the Arabs] have receded in democratic and technological and scientific
development – is disfigured by a whole series of outmoded and
discredited ideas …"

There has been a demographic explosion in the Islamic world, and the
leaders have simply not coped, unable to provide jobs, housing, health
facilities, transport, and with inflation running high, all compounded by
human rights abuses (torture, summary justice, executions, etc.) This
failure has been very ably exploited by the Islamists to increase their
prestige, and power, which, in turn, has led to mounting demands for
increasing Islamization of society.

Only secularism and democracy can counter the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism, only under democracy will a healthy and necessary
criticism of society be possible. For as the Devil says to Ivan
Karamozov,
"without criticism there would be nothing but hosanna [an exclamation
of praise to God]. But hosanna alone is not enough for life. It is
necessary that this hosanna should be tried in the crucible of
doubt."